Dance Studio Flames
by arisaswordheart
Summary: The Cullens have always worked diligently to cover up the truth and hide their real idenity, but what happens when two Detectives and an Arson Investigator work to try and find out the truth of the Dance Studio Fire? RENAMED. Previously 'The Arsonist'.
1. The Dance Studio

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**The Arsonist**

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**1. **The Dance Studio**

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**Complete Summary: **The dance studio is in flames, the fire licking up the sides of the building. Oh, we all know what caused this blaze as the Cullens set fire to the studio to cover up the destruction and James' death as well as all the spilling of Bella's blood everywhere. But what about when two Detectives and an Arson Investigator work to find out the truth?

**Please Note:** All locations apart from the dance studio are fictitious (probably). I have never been to Phoenix and don't know anything about it either... Also, all police methods may not be accurate – I'm not part of a police force or anything, after all. Dates should be accurate if times aren't so much so (but hey, it was never specified).

Rated T to be on the safe side. Shouldn't be too bad. Most likely only in the last chapter anyway.

**Blanket Disclaimer:** Who thinks I own Twilight? Thought not. Why would I be here otherwise? The Twilight Series does not belong to me; it never has and never will.

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_Phoenix Dance/Ballet Studio_

_16__th__ March 2005_

_7:58 PM_

Detective Cato Delfine studied the burnt out shell of the dance studio in the artificial light of the bright spotlights as firefighters put out the last of the blaze. He'd been called in because, apart from the fire, there had also been a car parked haphazardly outside the dance studio, most likely stolen and also most likely linked. To be perfectly honest, fire and arson wasn't really his area of expertise, but he thought he could safely say that it looked more like a case of arson than anything else.

Arson Investigator Erica Alan came up next to him as she ducked back through the line of police officers trying to keep the crowd well away, her sharp eyes studying the building also as she calculated. Her eyes flicked sideways, assessing the damage as they had assessed the movements of the flames a little earlier licking up the walls of the building. Slowly, she now went up to the steaming rubble and looked over it carefully, although unable to enter it until the firefighters pronounced the building safe.

"It looks like a sure case of arson to me, unless some people were playing with fire inside and accidentally set something alight." Erica announced as Cato followed her to the burned down building at a distance. "Or someone dropped a cigarette in there or something."

"We'll have to search to see if anyone got caught inside." Cato replied grimly. "And any other evidence of what set the fire or if something happened inside."

Erica nodded. "Otherwise though, the fire started from inside and spread outside, looks most likely. I don't know why anyone would want to set this dance studio alight, but with the wooden floors, this building would have gone up easily."

Cato nodded. "It probably would have gone up in seconds," he agreed. "Thanks."

He looked around at the crowd that had gathered not too far away staring at the firefighters still putting out the flames and sighed. A little group of media personnel had also started gathering, snapping pictures and television cameras taking footage. Didn't these people know better than to stand watching? It was dangerous and it had taken quite a bit of skill to keep the blaze from not jumping to the buildings on either size of the dance studio.

Also, they allowed the arsonist – if indeed there was one – to escape quickly. When Cato had first arrived on scene, he and two other officers had conducted a hot search and a cold search, looking to see if anyone was still around. It hadn't seemed like it, but it wasn't as if they could be sure since the crowd had gathered in horror, watching the blaze, allowing the perp a perfect place to hide and a perfect cover.

"I'll be going to get the registration plate looked at now as well as the other evidence I gathered." Cato told Erica now. "If you come by later you can have a look at the photos when we first got to the scene and see what you can get from that." He suggested.

Erica nodded. "Sure. I'll be back here tomorrow to see if we can sift through anything. You're welcome to come and overlook or help out, but I'll be passing anything I find to you anyway. I'm staying here for a while to see if I can find out anymore and I'm going to help the fire fighters see if anything else is still alight." With another acknowledging nod, she turned and went over to the firefighters who now stood, turning over chunks of wood as the last of the fire was extinguished, and checking for embers.

Cato himself turned and made his way over to the crowd on his way to his car. He was attacked by the media at once. He bet Erica had also been attacked in similar fashion when she had gone out to her car to grab her kit.

"Officer, do you think the car outside was stolen?"

"Detective! What do you think caused the fire?"

"No comment." Cato spoke the familiar words as he ignored the questions and pushed past the people. He went to his car, once again ignoring the media trying to gain his attention, and pulled out. What was with people like that? He understood they were only doing their job, but it didn't make him like them any more.

He drove back to the police department on the intent of looking up the registration plate and sifting through the other evidence they could get from the car. As he stalked in the doors, going over to his desk, he overheard snippets of other officer's conversation.

"Have a search of the database. If you put the names in there should be two or three names coming up at least that match. Yes, that's right. Make sure you let me know when you're done, I want some background checks done."

"Yeah, seems she fell down two flights of stairs and out a window. Someone reported it because they heard all the noise, but seemed like she just tripped or something. Such a mess, don't really know if I should believe it myself. Nothing really to look into unless you think she got pushed…?"

"They went to take care of a car crash out on Charlton Road. Yeah, they should be back in half an hour, maybe. It was only a head to tail crash, but the cars were pretty damaged. There's an ambulance there now, I'm not sure how badly they might be hurt though."

Like always, there were many things going on at once. Cato tuned out of the conversations, sat down at his desk and pulled up the database, searching up the registration plate of the car. It was registered to a Henry Bryant, but he was listed as being almost 40 years old, so it either wasn't the work of hooligans – and perhaps the result of too much alcohol – or maybe Bryant's car had been stolen.

It hadn't been reported stolen, but there was a possibility that Bryant hadn't discovered it was missing yet, hadn't been to check it. Cato made a few more enquiries and discovered Bryant had been in the air at the approximate time of the incident. He was due to touch down in about an hour. That Bryant had checked in to get on the plane – and therefore should have been on the plane at the time of the incident – allowed enough evidence to prove that Bryant was suitably innocent.

That also meant that the car had probably been stolen from the airport. Cato made note of that and to check flight arrival times which could approximately coincide with that of the car theft. Well, this was another lead he had now, but he'd still lost a suspect.

With a sigh, Cato pulled out his cell phone and left Bryant a message on his voicemail that his car had been stolen and that he would either need to come down to Phoenix Police Department, or call them so someone could pick him up. Cato then hung up and turned back to the remaining evidence. There had been the prints from the car wheel and taken from the doors, but he would need Bryant's fingerprints before he could say anything. He needed to rule out the car owner and people who may have ridden in the car for legitimate reasons.

But for now, he carefully scanned the fingerprints onto the computer and saved them into a file for safekeeping until he could take a better look at them, then looked through the pictures he had snapped with a digital camera of the crime scene. There wasn't all that much to see, with the car parked outside the burning dance studio. He sifted through them on the computer.

With the way the car was parked, not to mention the driver's door hanging wide open, it was most likely the person had been in a hurry or simply not have cared much, but parking it in such a manner would have been very obvious to people something wasn't right, and therefore measures usually would have been made to park the car properly, either for a quick getaway after setting the fire, or so people didn't realise the fire had started until the fire had eaten away at the inside of the building.

Of course, there was also the fact that the car was very new and a very fast one, it would have stood out, so Cato wasn't really sure how affective just parking it nicely in the street would be if there were people there watching.

As it was, the street had already been pretty deserted at that time, barely anyone wandering the street and the fire had barely been caught, but even so, preventive measures should have been made. Cato judged that the person would have been in a great hurry getting to the studio, but the question was why.

Meeting someone maybe?

Who knew? If it was the case, either a case of kidnapping where they were in a hurry to save someone, or someone trying to stop the arsonist even in a hurry to stop them – and in either case he wondered if he would probably be better off on the look for anything vaguely like human remains in the building. Ugh. This case just got more and more difficult.

His cell phone rang and Cato answered as he continued to look through the images.

"Um, hi, I'm looking for a Detective Delfine."

"Speaking." Cato replied. "Are you Henry Bryant?"

"Yes. You called me about my car being stolen? I got your message when I checked my phone after I got off the plane, but I didn't understand it, only after I got out –"

"That's quite alright." Cato interrupted. "Explanations are not necessary. At this point, I don't feel you are guilty of anything and can only let you know your car was involved in something of an accident. We would like you to come up to Phoenix PD so you can provide us with fingerprints and information about where and from when your car was parked."

"Of course –"

"Would you like to be picked up from the airport?"

"Uh, yes, thanks."

"A car will be there in ten minutes." Cato said crisply, and then hung up the phone.

He called to one of the officers who was helping him out and had conducted the search at the studio with him. The officer left within the minute in a squad car with siren on and with instructions to bring Henry Bryant back with speed.

Meanwhile, Cato ran a search and pulled up maps of the area around the airport. He would need to contact the airport later and have a look through their video surveillance tapes – or DVDs or CDs, whichever it was now. Bryant arrived just as Cato had finished looking through the last map.

"Hello, Mr Bryant." Cato greeted as he got up out of his chair and they proceeded to move to another room. "I'm afraid your car was stolen and it was found just outside a building that was burnt to the ground. It hasn't been badly damaged, although the smoke may possibly have touched it, but it's being withheld for now."

Cato proceeded to question Bryant about his personal details and other details about his car before he began to fingerprint him, then they returned to his desk.

"Could you tell me whereabouts your car was parked?"

"It wasn't in the main car park." Bryant said, frowning in concentration and pointing at an area on the map Cato had pulled up. "It was in the outer car park, nearer to the entrance." His finger drew circles around the approximate area. "I got there pretty early this morning." He explained.

Cato thanked him; let him know he would be called if they needed anything else. Bryant hesitated as he was dismissed.

"When will I be able to get my car back?"

"I can't be sure." Cato replied. "We still need to go over it for more evidence, but once we are done, it will be cleaned and returned to you. In the meantime we would be happy to provide you with a rental if you would prefer."

"Ah…. that would be nice."

"It will be arranged. Go talk to the lady at the front desk and she'll have it done for you."

Cato's crisp tone obviously spelled out Bryant was dismissed once again and Bryant turned and headed towards the front desk as directed as Cato turned back to his case.

At times like this he wished he had a partner to flesh things out with. Still, he guessed if he needed help he could ask his friend and he could double as a partner. Swiveling on his chair, he turned to peer around. Yes, Aleron was at his desk. Good.

Cato stood up and went over to his friend, Detective Aleron Craig who was scrolling through an article on his computer and looked up as Cato approached.

"Hey." Aleron fixed Cato with a look. "I recognize that expression. Need help?"

Cato raised an eyebrow at him, "Were you expecting me?"

"I don't know, what do you think?"

Cato glared at him, "You make me feel incompetent sometimes."

Aleron grinned at him, "No, actually I hoped you might want my help on this anyway. You know me, curious."

Cato sighed. He certainly knew that about his friend. He filled his friend in on the details – which was surprisingly little, really – and leant back against the edge of the table as Aleron processed what he'd been told.

"Okay, we think Bryant is innocent so at the moment we have no other suspects. We should go to the airport tomorrow, go through the video, search up the passenger records then we can start on the fingerprints."

Cato nodded. He thought that was the good way to go. A case often was too much work for just a single person to handle though. It was good to have people you called 'sounding boards' where you could just fling ideas at them – nomatter how crazy they may sound – and see what argument or agreement they will fling back. It was often a good strategy and it was good to have someone's opinion as well.

"You were not working on anything, right?" Cato remembered with a frown.

Aleron grinned. "No. It's like you to forget that, isn't it? I just finished something with Brian, so I'm more than happy to go partners on this."

"Thanks."

"We might as well call it a night, thought." Aleron said with a yawn as he closed windows on his computer and shut down. "It's too late to do anything now." His tone dared Cato to disagree, when he didn't, Aleron smiled and urged. "Come on."

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If you're not understanding the story, you're welcome to review (anytime! Haha) and ask me questions, but if you really aren't understanding any of this at all, I'd advise you it might be better not to read this…

I'm happy to flesh out anything you need extra explaining about though.

Review and tell me if you like it?

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	2. Sifting

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**The Arsonist**

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**2.** Sifting

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**Author's Note:** Don't kill me if I use the same word fifteen times. I wrote the entire story (and I meant the entire story not a chapter, all of it) in about… 12 hours… so I'm a bit starved for vocabulary… My feet are also killing me….I've sat here for so long now...

Urm, okay, it's the next day now. But I'm not going to be going back and changing anything.

**Disclaimer applies. (previous)**

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_Phoenix PD_

_17__th__ March 2005_

_7:20 AM_

Detective Cato Delfine had just come in the next morning, a take away cup of coffee in his hand as normal per the lovely police stereotype, when there were mutterings from the police department's cafeteria. The cafeteria not so much sold food, but was just where everyone gathered to eat most of the time. Even so, the woman waiting at the counter was disgruntled as he and several other officers and detectives joined the crowd around the television for the early news.

Cato raised his eyebrows as he saw footage of the burnt out shell of the dance studio.

"There was also a stolen car outside the studio. Police suspect arson was the cause of the blaze." The newsreader concluded as the image flicked back to the newsreader who introduced the next story as the image behind him also changed.

"In a hotel, a young girl allegedly _tripped_ while descending some stairs and fell down two flights of stairs and out a window. Police have ruled it an accident. The lady has yet to regain consciousness but is in a stable condition. Her family and friends have requested her name be disclosed…"

Cato turned away from the footage of the smashed hotel window as the newsreader concluded that they would probably not press charges. He wondered who had let the media know what the police thought, or if someone had overheard his and Erica's conversation. Or even if the media had just assumed given the way the building had been, but who knew? He just hoped they didn't have a leak somewhere, but to be honest – if they did, he would be the first suspect as he was the only person who really knew anything about the case.

Cato sighed at the continued problems and settled at his desk, pulling up some information he read before Aleron came up to him, a mug of coffee clasped in his hand.

"Ready to go check out the airport?"

"Sure." Cato replied, finishing his own coffee and lobbing the cup into the bin. He put his computer on standby and they headed out to climb in one of the station's squad cars. They were at the airport in twenty minutes because of the early morning traffic and they went inside briskly, going over to the counter.

Dressed as they were, not in uniform as they were detectives, but dressed pretty casually but with a degree of formality in shirt, slacks and leather jacket for Cato and a longer dark brown jacket for Aleron, they flashed their badges at the lady at the counter and requested what they needed. A few minutes later, after some explanation and more badge showing, they were shown into the staff only area and allowed access to the video.

There were not that many cameras in the parking lots, Cato realised, but as he pulled up the one of the entrance, well aware of one of the security guard's gaze burning into the back of his head, he thought he could see the carpark area well enough. He went back to the previous day, scrolling to around midday before he let it play on triple speed, waiting for someone to head over towards the carpark.

He stopped the tape a few times as people went over to collect their cars, but then a while later frowned as something seemed to move quicker than his eyes could follow – then again, he was playing at triple the speed – and a car began to pull out of the lot, but he hadn't seen anyone approach.

Aleron hit pause. "Weird."

Cato agreed. "Go back."

They scrolled back about seven minutes and watched at normal speed; finally after a minute or so, someone emerged from the entrance, looked around as though for something – or someone? – and headed towards the car. They were walking very quickly and determinedly, so quickly in fact that they seemed to jump at points. At this moment Cato cursed the slow frame rate and monochrome scheme of security cameras, but it couldn't be helped.

Cato noticed that a group of people had left the airport, but two others seemed to look towards the guy who was now starting to get into the car.

Hang on, how had he gotten in?

Cato supposed the lock had been picked, maybe, but noone could do it that quickly could they? He didn't know, the door hadn't shown damage of that extent so it hadn't been forced and there weren't any broken windows. It was all very mysterious, but for now, he accepted it.

The car sat there for a while longer and then pulled out of the lot with speed. Cato raised his eyebrows as he assessed it seemed to be under the hand of an experienced driver, and it tore out of the carpark, people staring in its wake. Hotwired, he guessed, but quickly indeed. Hmm.

"Looks like they broke a speed limit there." Aleron said grimly, eyes narrowed at the car as he paused and rewinded it again, trying to see if there were any good images.

Each image after the other was inconvenient, someone just managing to block the person, too far away, too grainy, their hand suddenly coming up to block most of their face, the roof of the car obscuring most of their face. Ugh. But at least they could verify it was the right car and by the end they had also decided that it was probably a male who had taken the car.

"The question is now," Aleron said with a sigh, "If it's the same person who set that building alight."

Cato put his hand on his hips as he organized his thoughts. "Yes, I think it probably is. I don't think the car would have been stolen again a second time, but the question is, why pick that location? Why the studio?"

"I don't know. Grudge? But we wouldn't know about it if it was. Besides, arsonists often don't need much of an excuse to burn something down to the ground. I think we should scrap the motive for now."

"No, I disagree." Cato insisted. "That fire didn't seem like it would be the work of a professional arsonist, but probably an amateur."

"Doesn't mean they couldn't have only did it for fun. All professional arsonists start out as amateurs."

Cato frowned. "Perhaps." Why did he get the feeling he was missing something? Then an idea popped into his head. A long shot perhaps, but it might lead to something. "The fire might have been lit to cover something up?"

"Like another crime?" Aleron's voice was faintly surprised, but he could see how it was possible.

"Sure. It would make sense." Cato suddenly looked up and blinked, remembering suddenly that Erica was going to be at the site today looking for evidence. If they joined her with these new perspectives, it would be interesting to see what they might come up with. "We should probably go back to the scene and see if Investigator Alan has found anything."

"Alan?" Aleron looked at Cato quizzically. "Hang on, if there's another person already working on this, why are we too?"

"Arson Investigator _Erica_ Alan." Cato corrected. "It's not just a fire we're investigating here and not just a stolen car either. This could be serious."

"Hmm." Aleron gave a nod. "Our work here is done. Or at least, I don't think we can do much more. Let's go visit the Investigator."

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Arson Investigator Erica Alan was sifting through the rubble, as they termed it, with a fine toothed comb. She was going over every inch of it as carefully as she could. The latex gloves on her hands had long been grey with soot and dust even though it was true she hadn't gotten very far when Cato and Aleron arrived.

"Investigator!"

Erica looked up as Cato approached slowly.

"Is it alright to come in, or would you rather we stay out?" Cato called.

"One of you." Erica replied evenly, pulling down the sooty mask around her nose and mouth. "Be careful though. You know the standard procedure."

Cato looked at Aleron, and by silent agreement, Cato went into the burned up building, pulling a pair of gloves from his pocket as he drew closer, careful about what he stepped on.

"Anything?" Cato asked as he crouched.

"Not much to say what caused the fire; the ground here is pretty much dirt as you can see. The whole wooden floor of the building burned. There wasn't any accelerant used, such as gasoline or anything. There is an unusual smell in the air I can't quite place, but am very worried about though."

"Um." Cato began, but Erica ploughed on.

"Anyway, if no fuel was brought the only thing they might have used to fuel the flame would just be the room itself, the floorboards, maybe, which might account for how the flames spread so fast."

"Is the water damage bad?" Cato asked.

"Well, of course you always lose evidence when the firefighters put out a fire, but still, I guess you have some evidence left to work with. There always is evidence, as you _should_ know anyway. If it ever was here, there still should be a trace of it somewhere. The problem is finding it, always, isn't it?"

Suddenly Cato kicked against something as he shifted.

"Hey, be careful!"

But Cato wasn't listening. "Hang on. Isn't that glass?"

Erica bent for a closer look as Cato reached down and carefully extracted it from the damp ground with his gloved hand. It was a melted piece of glass, twisted, with slivers of silvered glass stuck to it.

Mirror glass.

The edges of some of the piece were jagged, showing that the mirror had probably smashed somewhere along the line, then melted some in the heat and joined up with the larger glass. The fire could have slowly burned away at the wood, causing the mirrors to come loose and smash – it was feasible. But the extent to which it had been melted made them think otherwise. The glass looked like it had been smashed before the fire had reached the walls.

Cato suddenly stood up and went to one of the last sides of the building still standing, the last crumbling wall. The dirty mirror glass there reflected the sunlight dully. He turned to look at Erica, then he brushed off some of the soot with a pretty grimy cloth Erica passed him and they sat back to look at it.

The glass there looked smashed, as though something had been thrown into it. There wasn't much of it left to go by, admittedly, but the pattern of the cracks across it showed very clearly something had been thrown into it. It obviously hadn't been thrown into that area exactly, but, once again, the way the glass was smashed definitely looked like something had been thrown against it.

"A psychopath." Erica said in a sarcastic tone as she looked at the glass emotionlessly, rolled her eyes , then sighed. "What on – "

"No." Cato looked over it, still frowning. "I get the feeling this gets deeper and maybe I'm on the right track."

"What track is that?"

Cato glanced at her.

"Oh come on, if I'm helping you, I deserve to know some things."

"You just want a promotion or something?"

"Ugh." Erica rolled her eyes. "I just want to figure out what happened here."

Cato smiled. "I guess I have myself quite a team." He reached out a grimy glove-covered hand, "Welcome Erica Alan."

Erica raised an eyebrow at him as he helped her to her feet and he led her back out and introduced her to Aleron. The two seemed to wonder if Cato was joking or not both shooting their 'leader' a strange look.

Either way, Aleron hung back and Erica followed as Cato stripped off his gloves, stuck them in his pocket and used the camera he retrieved from the car to photograph the mirror and the piece of melted mirror glass they had found.

"Now," Cato announced as he had returned the camera to the car, "we go figure out that smell."

This time Aleron followed as they went back and the three split up. Cato sniffed, trying not to inhale too much soot as he went over to where, most likely, the fire had started. The damage there seemed to be the greatest, almost everything burned out of existence by the great heat of the blaze.

He took a deeper breath, filtering through the smell of charred wood. Suddenly there was a sound behind him.

"Ugh." Erica had come up behind him a ways and was frowning now. "I know what this smells like."

"What?"

"It smells like… burnt flesh, kind of. Just different. There's a really…" She shook her head, "Strange thing about it though. But definitely flesh."

"Meat burning kind of smell? Something like that?"

"Could someone just have decided to have a meal here?" Aleron asked, having followed also. "Some… hobo?"

"No," Cato disagreed. "The place would be locked and the homeless wouldn't come here to live, I don't think." He met Aleron's gaze. "Besides, the homeless don't venture often in this part of town. This could well be about covering the other crime I discussed with you."

"What?" Erica look horrified.

"A fire to cover a murder. Possible." Cato shook his head, thinking aloud. "But there was noone with that man… perp at the airport, unless … he was in the car already, which would explain why he got in so quickly, but why would the… perp kill the other person?"

"Maybe you should just call him UNSUB." Aleron suggested.

"Probably because we know it's a guy and probably other things about it. It's not really an unknown subject is it?" Cato shot back. "Anyway, just ignore me if I call him the perpetrator, alright? Answer the question."

"There was noone in that car." Aleron disagreed with what Cato said before. "It was grainy for sure, but I didn't see anyone in that car when our 'perp' went over to it."

"So assuming the second person wasn't in the car already, they would have been picked up or here already. If they were here already, that might account for the unusual location." Cato drummed his fingers against his leg. "So the perp kills the second person and sets the studio alight."

"Hang on!" Erica's voice was alarmed. "You can't assume that this is a murder already. We can't be sure if whatever got burned here was animal or human, it's just burned flesh, or meat or whatever. It could be a dog for all I know. A pet bird!"

"I don't think it's a bird. It would need to be something big to leave such a smell." Cato told her. Erica gave him an as-if-I-didn't-know look, knowing he made sense but not wanting to acknowledge it.

"A horse?" Aleron joked earning a annoyed look from the other two.

Erica glowered at Cato and Aleron. "If you know so much, why do you need me at all?"

"Sounding board." Cato replied without hesitation. "I'm not dismissing your opinion at all, I am considering it, but it doesn't seem right to me. I'm sorry, but I get the feeling the one I am on right now is the right track."

Erica sighed heavily in defeat. "Alright, so assuming that this _is_ where someone died, how do you know the person who died isn't the person who lit the fire, the supposed arsonist?"

Aleron's shoulders drooped. "What are you saying, girl? We said it was the act of an arsonist and then it's back to accident? We're just going to go in circles at this rate."

"It's a good point." Cato's eyes were narrowed as he thought.

"If they were just lighting a cigarette or something, and dropped a match." Erica theorized.

"Hold it. They would have to be building a fire or having a very big accident for it to grow so big." Cato warned. "That is the one thing that is certain. Not to mention there has to be things in that building like fire extinguishers or a fire blanket. They are required to be kept in a handy place in _case_ of fire. Without purposely building a fire in the first place, the blaze would have gotten nowhere near that big."

"Where are you getting this?" Erica asked in annoyance, probably over the fact that he seemed to be taking over her job. This wasn't anything she didn't know, for sure, but Cato always seemed to be jumping ahead of her all the time.

"Deductive reasoning." Cato replied, still deep in thought. "But someone building a fire in here wouldn't be so stupid as to be caught in it unless they were committing suicide and the body language of the ... perp as he went to steal that car doesn't seem like someone going to die."

"On the contrary." Aleron had to agree, "When I think about it, and this is a new perspective, not trying to see things with a bias, his movements could be described as someone with an intention to kill."

"Oh, come on." Erica's voice was scandalized. "You can't not think biased. People see what they want to see."

"Alright, then." Aleron raised a superior eyebrow at Erica and she flushed, very aware that she had spent a shorter time on the force than they had. Aleron sighed. "He seemed furious at the least. I am sure of that. That sort of deep anger that I'm not sure I can explain."

Erica gave him a disbelieving look.

"And that's what gives him away." Cato concluded. "I say this all points to that."

"There's not enough evidence to prove anything." Erica argued. "Just theories."

"We have a video tape." Cato counted, "We have mirror, which obviously looks broken in a manner which means something was thrown at it, so some violence probably happened here. We have the smell of burnt flesh which is here, even after a bath of water to put out the fire. I think it seems pretty conclusive at this point." He sighed, "At least it adds up in my mind when I try to add up all these factors."

Aleron rubbed his chin. "The car was a fast car, not to mention the way it was positioned, they were probably in a hurry. But why are they in a hurry? You can't be in a hurry to kill."

"A kidnapping." Erica shot.

Cato was a little surprised at this new perspective. Maybe Erica was a very good team member for all she seemed to have a 'rigid mind' as he might call it.

"It could fit." Cato allowed. "So we have three or so theories… maybe. What we're missing is a suspect of any kind."

Aleron nodded. "The airplane lists and the fingerprints. We'll look through those and see if we can find a suspect. The time from the video showed the time to be around 3 o'clock, so it would have been a flight not too early before that if our perp was in a hurry."

Cato smiled at this thee-person team. "Let's do it."

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Hope you liked it. I'm well aware the story is strange and also well aware of my interest in crime fiction. I didn't really think anyone would be all that interested in reading, to be honest, since this isn't your usual Edward and Bella story. So, I'm glad there've been people in here at least.

**Mind dropping me a review then, if you've been reading?**

I love writing these cases, but I don't think anyone wants to read them a lot of the time. This is actually my second Twilight crime fan fiction. The first one has not been published yet and it is called 'Mystery Song'. It's taken quite a while as I do all the planning and research on police methods.

I hope if you've gotten this far, you'll continue to read the rest…

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	3. Mulling it Over

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Dance Studio Flames

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**3.** Mulling It Over

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**Author's Note:** The story was _renamed_ today. I'm not getting much from this, I admit. It doesn't seem like this topic is very popular, which makes me wonder if I should upload my other story – maybe a test trial? Hmm.

**Disclaimer applies as always.**

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_Phoenix PD_

_17__th__ March 2005_

_4:37 PM_

Detective Cato Delfine looked over the sheets of passengers from over a spread of planes arriving at around the 3 o'clock mark which Detective Aleron Craig had handed him to look for suspects on. They'd theorized for ages and had come up with a couple of working theories, at least, as far as they could see.

One.

The man they had seen in the video – the perpetrator as he would be referred to – had stolen a car, driven it to the studio, then proceeded to murder someone. This was the simple murder theory.

Two.

The perp had still stolen the car, but they had gone to save someone, then killed the captor – for one reason or another. This was the simple version of the kidnapping, saving, and murder theory.

Or three.

Erica still argued there might not be a second person in the mix and that the person that had died had been the same one at the airport.

Cato had a good feeling the first and second theories were more right than the third, the second more so. He trusted his instincts. In any case though, they all seemed pretty plausible not to mention fit the evidence they had and all they needed now was a suspect to try and work out motive and which theory was correct.

But the long lists of passengers were proving stubborn.

All the female passengers had been ruled out immediately. True, there were ways perhaps a girl could look like a boy, but after going back to the airport again to get a copy of the video and going through it with a fine tooth comb, frame by frame, it seemed pretty certain their guy was well… a guy.

"Young." Cato said finally. "Search up ages and rule out anyone who is over, say 30." He sat down with a sigh as the list was taken back and worked on again.

"Take a break." Aleron said, glancing over as he worked on the fingerprints. The ones from Henry Bryant, the real owner of the stolen car, had been eliminated as well as family members. Cato had called the family in for fingerprinting earlier as well as extensive questioning as they thought that perhaps someone who had keys to the car – or access to keys – would be able to open the door do fast came up.

Unfortunately – for the detectives anyway – they all had alibis which were confirmed and the family was released. All copies of the car keys also were checked and the keepers swearing the keys had been with them all day.

So the family was ruled out for now.

Still there were a bundle of fingerprints on the car. Who knew? It might be, in the end, just someone who accidentally brushed against the car and noone at all. It would be another dead end.

An hour later, Cato had fallen asleep at the desk when Erica came back in, bearing the list of names. She looked surprised to see him asleep at the desk.

"Shh." Aleron warned.

Erica shot him an I-know-that look. "I'm just surprised to see him asleep. He was so commanding, confident. Energetic? So _into_ it, I suppose. Now... blepph." She made the slumping noise with her tongue.

Before she could say anything else, Cato was already stirring, and pulled himself away from his desk, running a hand over his face and shaking his head to clear it. "What have you got?"

"I haven't got coffee." Erica replied, "But I think you'll need a cup. Here's the list of names, I'll be right back."

Cato blinked at Erica as she disappeared, but picked up the printed list of names.

"Andrews, Adam." He muttered as he read swiftly. "Arnold, Peter. Abraham, Matt. Brolga, Michael. Casula, James. Clay, Samuel. Cullen, Edward. Dram, Jack." He sighed, scanning the rest of the list of 30 or so people. "Is there anyway to get pictures of these people?"

"Perhaps." Aleron guessed. "In any case, could we look into if there is anyone close to these people that might give them a motive?"

"I'm sure they all have families or people they want to protect." Cato sighed. "Even if it's parents or something. What to do?"

Erica returned with cups of coffee which she passed around. The two men thanked her.

"I couldn't help but hear. You could see if any of the prints you got match, firstly."

"We don't have everyone's prints though." Aleron argued. "Only those that have been entered into the system and you know how many that means aren't."

"It seems we're at a dead end for now." Cato said with another sigh as he sipped at the coffee which brought him to life a little more.

"Look." Aleron said now, looking at his friend closely. "You look tired, so take a break. I'm going to actually get that car looked over and see if it was picked or what so we actually have an idea what kind of person we might be looking for."

"Good idea." Cato said. He shouldn't have assumed it had been picked like that, should he have.

"Erica. You stay with Cato and discuss… whatever with him. Flesh out more, maybe." Aleron instructed, then turned and disappeared out the door.

"Hmm." Erica sat down in Aleron's vacated chair and took a drink from Aleron's cup after putting her own down. "Wasted." She eyed Cato for a while, then finally made some sort of small talk. "You know, I've never really been in this PD. The Arson Investigation has their little branch. Not much action there, usually. So I guess I was a little resentful you took the most interesting thing in ages."

"You could always switch to just police work." Cato said, glancing at her before picking up more notes.

"Fires are what I'm good at though, at least until this time. Seems like I'm always getting bested by you."

The beginning of a smile hovered around Cato's mouth. "I'm just good with instinct… and maybe logic, I don't know. Do you think I'm logical?"

"Maybe. I still don't agree with you totally, but I guess it can be plausible."

Cato frowned as he looked at the document. "Witness statement."

"What?"

"There's a witness statement here. There wasn't anyone around at the time of the accident, at least not that we saw, so where did this come from?"

"You _missed_ evidence?" Erica blinked in dismay. "So what, everything could be wrong?"

"No, nothing about that." Cato replied. "Nothing about any of that. Just what was burned, it seems. It's not long, all it says is that this kid saw purple smoke at first, so didn't know if it was fire or not before it blossomed into a bigger fire."

"And how long was this? How long did this kid stand and stare?"

"A few minutes, maybe. He actually lives pretty far away from the studio and he was only looking out by chance. Besides, he's only ten though."

"So why the statement?"

"Seems like their family is the one that reported it, but it was already a pretty big blaze then and we got a few calls coming in at the same time shortly after also reporting the same incident."

"Right." Erica said a little dubiously. "Anyway, it could throw a spanner in the works, you know. Burning chemicals or other things could account for the purple smoke."

"Then what about the smell?"

"I don't know!" Erica sighed deeply in frustration. "This is all so confusing. It's like there's nothing that will totally convict anyone of anything and ugh." She shook her head violently to clear it.

"Erica. Erica!" Cato stopped her. "For all we know this can't be trusted information. This child could be mistaken. We don't know." He repeated. "And we all know how unreliable statements can be."

"Now you're just trying to twist things the way you want it."

Erica shook her head in annoyance as Aleron entered again and watch the two quizzically in their frustration.

"Alright...? I think something new must have come up."

They filled him in but he seemed to shelve it for further thinking.

"Okay. I have news also. The lock of the car looks like it most likely was picked and then the car looks like it was hotwired. It's some pretty snazzy work there and I have no idea how they did it that quickly." Aleron looked at Cato. "We probably should have looked more into this at first."

"It doesn't tell me much still." Cato argued. "Apart from the fact that I need to find one person on this list that can do that."

Aleron considered a while. "Let's look through the ages then and their backgrounds. I can run some background checks. We'll see who has a squeaky clean background and who doesn't."

"I doubt they're all massive law breakers if they're all pretty young." Erica said sarcastically.

"It's better to have something to do." Aleron murmured as he left.

Cato was still scanning the list, looking over it. "Someone who is local, someone who isn't?" He wondered, muttering under his breath. "When was the fire, when did the car get there? Someone not local."

"Someone not local?" Erica asked, interested.

"If they're not local, of course they would take longer to get there, but of course, we can't get an exact time on any of this so it's hard to say." Cato thought for a minute. "There's also traffic to take into account." He sighed. "I hope I'm not screwing this case up."

"No." Erica's voice was sharp. "So far everything has matched. It makes sense so it must be on the right track."

"Must it?" Cato asked, leaning back on his chair finally. "Just because it makes sense, doesn't mean it's right."

"But it probably is, isn't it?"

"Ever heard of people wrongly accused? People sometimes get convicted for things they didn't do, yet somehow the evidence was all seen in this manner and completely against them. I don't want to get this wrong and send the wrong person to jail."

"This is not a time to start doubting yourself. Stop and count the times you have been wrong."

He looked at her skeptically.

"Go, do it."

"Many times, obviously."

"About who was guilty, or not guilty? Not daily life or something."

"I haven't ever sent the wrong person to jail." Cato conceded finally.

"There you go. Have faith in yourself and your abilities."

Cato blinked at her, and smiled. "Thanks." Then he seemed to think of something. "That earlier thing I was thinking about. Hang on. Relative." He raised his eyebrows at Erica. "What do you think? That means that person must be from out of town with a loved one who has ties to Phoenix?" Cato's voice was more excited.

"A person from out of town." Erica thought for a minute. "That could be possible. It could account for some of the travelling time. It seems like it took longer than it should for the car to get from the airport to the studio. As for a loved one who perhaps is from here or related to here they are about to save. I see your reasoning, but you know this is only if I agree to the kidnapping theory. Why wouldn't they report something like that?"

Cato's eyes met hers. "More often than not the community can't trust the police."

"Why not?" The words felt a little stupid even as they left her mouth.

"Sometimes they're threatened. 'If you call the police, they die.' Sometimes they know the police won't be any help to them anyway and so they take matters into their own hands. Sometimes they think the police will just bungle it and get their loved one killed. There are many reasons." He smiled kindly at her. "You know it."

Erica pulled her knees up and put her arms around them. "I do. I guess I do agree somewhat with your theory, but…" She shook her head. "I just don't know. So much is uncertain."

"Often is." Cato said. "Not to mention the fingerprints are no good. We all know not everyone's fingerprints are on the database. We have a couple of fingerprints, but unless we get a suspect and take their fingerprints to check, we can't know if any of this can be scrapped." Sometimes he just felt like ripping his hair out – not that it would do him any good. Or make him look better for that matter. Better stay away.

"For now though, I think we can get a quick list of who's local and who isn't as a starting point for all these numerous theories now, yes?"

"Sure. I'll help." Erica offered.

They worked in companionable silence, both taking half the list and searching up. They'd finished about three-quarters of an hour later and had about a list of ten. Cato surveyed it quickly and smiled.

"At least I feel like we have some kind of start on this now." Cato said. "I'm going to go back and take another look at the scene and do some hard thinking."

"Should I come with you?" Erica asked. "You can 'sound' me again." She grinned. "You might have to make me a name tag. 'Sounding Board' at your service."

Cato grimace and rolled his eyes, a hint of a smile on his face.

"No. I think I need some time to sort out my thoughts and think this over. I bet there's something I missed. I just need a little peace and quiet. Sorry." Cato smiled apologetically.

Erica nodded understandingly though. "I can understand that. Good luck. I need to review the notes I took about the site and write up an analysis anyway. Alright if I use your computer?"

"Feel free." Cato replied. "I'll see you later."

--

Cato walked out from the parked squad car over to the burnt out building, looking over at it in the dying light of the sunset. Hmm, it was getting dark now, the twilight hours were approaching, but at least there was a streetlight there. It wouldn't be so dark he couldn't see. Cato just needed some time to organize all the confused thoughts in his head into the right places.

Unexpectedly, he sensed movement near the burnt out building and froze, frowning. There shouldn't be anyone there, the police tape around the whole of the place made that clear.

Something wasn't right, Cato could feel it. Carefully, he reached to his holster and pulfled fout his standard police issue gun. He slipped the safety off, hoping firing it wouldn't be necessary. It was there just in case, after all, if therfe was someone there, most likely thefy were up to no good. Even so, he wanted to be cautious and careful not to shoot carelessly just in case it was someone just seeking shelter.

Before he could move though, he was tackled to the ground, slamming into it with a hard thud. Cato and the other person landed in a heap. Cato was winded, but pushed but the other person – which felt like a woman – seemed to be deathly strong. Her expression was cold – as cold as her skin, probably – as she looked down at him. The woman's flesh was icy, but her ruby red eyes held a strange excitement.

"You've been a little troublesome." Her voice was beautiful in its way but also very creepy to hear it say those dark words. "I can't have you interfering."

"What… are you… talking about?" Cato managed to force out around the hold she had on him.

"You've been digging into what happened here. I watched you theorising with your friends. You came so close, oh so close, but you were wrong in one sense."

"What?"

"James, oh my beloved James." Her voice was bitter and her eyes were suddenly full of dislike. "He was only hunting her, that girl, but they decided to play a game." She smiled menacingly at Cato. "He likes games. I like whatever James likes. Liked." She expelled a sweet breath and Cato flinched. "But they caught up. I couldn't help, I was still coming. Arriving. I was lured away before that. So they killed James and saved that stupid human girl."

It took an effort but Cato kept his head still and his gaze unblinking and unflinching on her as she bent close, her long red curls of hair dipping onto the ground as her face came close to his again. "That's why I can't let you continue. Because _I'm_ going to be the one to kill Edward, or at least make him suffer. And I will make that human girl suffer too." She bared her shiny white teeth. "I can't let you do it."

Cato thought frantically, his mind cool even as another part of him knew he would die soon. His gun had been knocked away as she had tackled him and she'd just told him what happened. She would kill him now, this was no movie or story, and there would be noone to save him.

This was cruel reality.

He remembered the name. They had found it on the list of non-locals. Edward. There was only one of them. Edward Cullen. So, he had been the killer, but for the purpose of saving a … girl, it seemed from the person called James, who this woman wanted to avenge now. This James was probably the one who had perished in the fire – or been murdered anyway.

Wait.

Human girl?

"I can see you understand." The woman's voice was soft. "I'm going to give you my name so you know who I am. I am Victoria, and I'm now going to silence you for once and for all. I doubt either of your companions will ever figure out what happened in that studio without you."

Her hand descended even as Cato quickly struggled, etching what he hoped would be the right letters deep into the soil with a finger, even as the hand met with him and his world faded into blackness.

He would never wake again.

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There is an epilogue, I warn you. The story isn't _quite_ over just yet.

What of the new title? Opinions? Should I change it back? (To 'The Arsonist'?) Or would something else be more appropriate?

Review please? If you have even gotten this far? (Let me know! :O )

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	4. Missing

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**Dance Studio Flames**

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**4.** Missing

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**Note:** Pay close attention to the dates. Please ignore any mistakes I may have made – I'm in a bit of a hurry.

I had a change in plan – I'm lengthening the story.

**Disclaimer Applies**

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_23__rd__ March 2005_

_2:34 PM_

Detective Cato Delfine had been missing for many days now.

Days and days.

Arson Investigator Erica Alan stood just outside where the burned building had been taped off. Cato had set out, certainly, and his squad car that he had driven out parked at the location proved that, but the man himself was missing.

The footprints couldn't be certain anymore, since many cars and people had walked since, so there was no ways of knowing what could really have happened. Of seeing which could be _his_ signs of ever being there.

Cato's disappearance hadn't really been known until 24 hours after he had left Erica in the PD to go organize his thoughts. That had sparked a search and they had gone directly to where Cato had said he would be to look for him. They had found the markings etched in the dirt but not understood. There was a symbol – what looked to be a smudged E – as well as perhaps another letter, but it wasn't clear. The letters had almost been smudged away completely. It was also uncertain whether it had been Cato that had written it. For all they knew he cold have written an F or an L and someone had gone and graffitied it.

It was possible that Cato could have disappeared of his own free will, but Erica didn't think so and Aleron agreed. Cato wasn't that type of person. And if the etched letter was his, then certainly, Cato was probably in trouble.

But without evidence or, indeed, anything really to work with, Erica and Aleron had a problem and here was nothing at all they could do. Not to mention new developments.

The Chief of Police, Isaac Ward, looked up from his desk as Erica and Aleron entered his office. He put down his stack of papers and smiled up at them rather welcomingly.

"How may I help you two today?"

"We would like to ask for the Dance Studio Case to be reopened." Erica took the lead.

Ward hesitated and his smile faded from his face. "We had judged the case be closed. We looked over the evidence that you presented to us, but because nothing can be verified properly and no real conclusions can be drawn as well as the holes you know are in this case; we have decided the trail has gone cold. Not to mention anything Detective Delfine might have known will have gone with him."

"But sir, I believe with time we surely _can_ figure out –"

"I said no." Ward's voice was gentle, but firm. "Firstly we don't have that sort of luxury of time. Also, you cannot catch someone based on assumptions and surely not on instinct either. Instinct can get you to a certain point, say a suspect, but it will not prove anything. Even if you bring in fingerprints, a good attorney could wave it off just like that." He made a sweeping motion. "I'm sorry, but the case is cold because there isn't enough conclusive evidence. Just opinions and also your word on the truth of the smell at the scene."

"A little more time –"

"NO." Ward's voice was fierce now. "Don't you understand? I don't want to lose another detective like this." He took a deep breath. "Until we find more evidence, I don't want more officers sticking their noses into danger. This case is closed. Please leave it alone and leave."

Erica's brow furrowed with her discontent, but she obeyed.

"I don't know how evidence will ever be found if the case is closed." She replied coldly.

"I'm sorry about your friend, but we don't even know if Delfine's disappearance is related." Ward sighed again. "I'm sorry I cannot be of more help, but there is nothing I can do. There is no more evidence for the case, therefore there is nothing else which can be done, but to close it and dismiss it as the work of hooligans because of this shaky evidence."

"We understand, sir." Aleron replied smoothly as the two stood and left the office.

But they didn't really intend to leave the case alone, not really. Erica had grown to like Cato a lot during those two days and Aleron, one of Cato's few friends, felt it was his duty to find out what happened to his friend. They both had a feeling that Cato was right, and for sure, the perp who had killed whoever it was inside that studio had probably come back to silence the officer who would find out the truth. Cato's thirst for truth and justice and his sense of wrong and right was always very strong.

Aleron couldn't work on the case now, however. He had already been assigned a new case, and as everything was still rather quiet on the arson investigating front, Erica decided she would do researching on her own and Aleron would be able to do the computer searching whenever he had a reprieve.

It seemed a good plan as any, Erica decided as she returned home that day, dumped her handbag on the couch and walked into her study. She pulled open the first drawer, pulling out a pad of paper and a pen and, looking at all she could remember of the case she had written down, she flipped to a blank page and began to write.

--

_Not quite 6 Days ago…_

_Phoenix Hospital_

_17__th__ March 2005_

_11:41 PM_

"Doctor!" A man rushed into the for-once quiet Emergency room of Phoenix Hospital, alarmed and his voice extremely urgent.

Dr. Nicholas Rutterford turned with a sigh towards the man, hating that the first time he could actually relax, he was being called out again. But a job was a job and his was to save lives, so he made himself move regardless of what he thought. He recognised the man as one of the hospital's cleaning staff that frequently cleaned the Emergency area.

"What's wrong, Nelson?" Nick asked, stepping forward, remembering that Steve Nelson should have left an hour ago.

"I was just driving home when I saw someone just lying there, so, since I was there and the battery in my cell is flat, I turned around and drove right back."

Nick frowned. "And left them there?"

Nelson seemed to want to jump with frustration at Nick's lack of urgency. "Yes, of course. No, duh. He's in the back of my van. He looks pretty bad too. Can you get someone to look at him?"

Nick motioned to some of the nurses who had also been relaxing in the temporary lull and nodded to Nelson that they go and have a look at the man. Something was certainly wrong with him but it was too dark to tell as they maneuvered the man onto a stretcher and brought him inside.

"Stop," Nick ordered, suddenly, turning back to Nelson. "Did you check this man for a pulse or anything first? His neck looks like it was violently broken." He motioned to the nurses and they moved the man immediately into a better position on the stretcher.

"Like that thing they do in those movies?" Nelson asked, face paling.

Nick continued on, "With an injury like this, he's most likely dead, especially with not knowing how long he was exposed out there and not knowing exactly how he was found, I can't tell if he has even the slightest chance of survival."

"I felt the pulse so I brought him to you. It seemed like he would survive." Nelson's voice was anxious. "He looked okay."

Nick frowned again and stepped up beside the patient, feeling for a pulse on the man's neck while noting what looked like a jagged cut on the side of the man's neck. It was true, the man's heartbeat seemed a little slow and sluggish, but was definitely there. But what to do? The man surely was dead even though his heart was still beating. Would it hurt to keep him there for a few days? Heck, the man might even die within the hour.

What should he do?

Nick sighed irritably and rubbed his head. Well, maybe it wouldn't hurt to keep the man there for a little while. They might as well clean him up, but truthfully, Nick didn't know how long the man was going to last.

"Look for any identifying cards or anything." He instructed on of the nurses. "Does he have a wallet?"

The nurse flicked through the pockets of the man's slacks. "No. Or if he did, it probably fell out."

Nick looked over the man's clothing and had to silently agree. The man's simple shirt and slacks were torn and he looked like he had been in a fight or something. In that case, would it be a good idea to call the police? It'd probably be in everyone's best interests … then again, it was hardly like the man was going to get up and start a ruckus here too. Not to mention he wasn't required to call in a fight, just a bullet wound.

"Then let's have him registered as John Doe for now." Nick said, pulling a clipboard off the desk and scribbling the man's new name on the front and flicking it onto John's bed.

At that moment, John's eyes flew open and a strangled gasp escaped from his lips before a suppressed sound of pain. Nick had jumped back in surprise. So much for the man not waking up. He wasn't sure how it could be the man wasn't dead, but that didn't matter right now. From the man's expression, he seemed to be in intense pain.

"Painkiller!" Nick ordered and a nurse dashed off even as an ambulance tore in front of the Emergency and paramedics got out in a hurry. The nurse returned with a bottle and a wrapped needle and dashed off to help the paramedics wheeling in a patient. Nick ripped off the wrapper of the needle, plunged it into the lid of the bottle of painkiller he knew would be an opiate and thought to look at what it was before injecting. It was morphine, so Nick quickly sucked up the right amount in the needle and injected it in John.

John's eyes closed and his features slackened, but Nick had no way of knowing what was happening to him. Nick didn't even understand how John could be alive.

"Nurse Watson." He motioned to the nurse to staunch the blood still leaking slightly from the wound and told her to move him to a room before going over to the other patient who was being wheeled away at that moment. Car accident victim.

It wasn't until much later that Nick returned to where John had been wheeled into. Just like magic right after the accident patient had been looked after, the emergency had gotten busier, with a pregnant mother coming in, a girl who had broken her leg falling down the stairs and a child with half her face swollen like a ball.

Nick looked at the patient with a type of bone weariness. John had been set up with a monitor that showed his heart seemed to be beating just fine and a bandage wound around his neck. He'd had a blood transfusion, as he'd lost quite a bit of blood from the neck wound.

He flopped down a minute on the chair, hoping to think, but the next minute his eyes had flitted shut and he accidentally fell asleep. When he blinked awake a few hours later in surprise, sat up and wondered what had woken him, he looked up at the electrocardiograph and noticed a sudden changing. John made a muffled noise again and Nick could guess that pain had most likely returned. They would need to find out what was wrong – what was causing this pain – and find a way to treat it. For now, they had no idea what kind of accident or event he had been in so that he had been injured. One thought was spinal injury though, it could be looked into.

It wasn't like he was severely injured though – only the wound on the neck and the broken neck, which was now securely held in a neck brace. It seemed that their actions in bringing John to the emergency hadn't had any lasting effects on him, for which Nick was grateful.

Nick was only fairly new at the hospital, really. He'd been a doctor for at least a year, but he'd recently been transferred from a different hospital, so it wasn't quite the same here as it was there. Also the fact that he was one of the few doctors in at this time of the night, it made it a little daunting as the personnel expected instructions from him even though he felt disorientated enough so that he wasn't sure exactly what was happening.

Nick considered for a while. They would have to get some scans to see if John had spinal injuries, but until then Nick was only going to give him codeine. He had given morphine that first time because of the fact that John's pain seemed to be severe, but if –

John made the slightest thrashing movement on the bed and Nick's train of thought stopped. No, scratch that. He seemed to be in genuine intense pain. Although he could still use codeine, would John swallow it? Maybe it was better to use an able to be injected painkiller.

Pulling a bottle he had actually retrieved earlier for John from a pocket, he pulled another needle from a drawer and injected it through a side section of the IV needle already taped to John's arm, but at that moment, not connected to anything and sealed off. Nick wrapped the used needle away before he noticed the dirt under the nails of his right hand. What had that man been doing? Playing in the dirt? Well, he had been found on the road after all – who knew … Nick shook his head after leaving a note and went down to schedule a scanning for John.

He'd have to hurry though, Nick realised as he saw the people in the Emergency room. Time was a-wasting and there were more people than ever even in the later hours of the morning waiting for service.

--

_Alan Residence_

_24__th __March 2005_

_9:25 AM_

Erica thought that she had about most of the facts Cato had thought of down pat as she looked over her notepad that morning after having talked to Aleron about what he had known. Of course, Cato might have already had an idea of what was going on, but all she had was the facts. Now it was up to her to find what was hidden in the riddle.

Erica poured over the details, and then wondered if there were any sources of information and evidence they might have missed. The investigation had been far from over when Cato had disappeared, which meant there was more to find, only that Cato had yet to find it, as magnificent as he was in his work.

Erica had looked over Cato's file a while ago and seen his high ratio of solved cases. Cato's instincts were good, but he made sure to back up his theories as much as possible. Although his theories had seemed far-fetched to her, he hadn't just been making assumptions, he'd been making theories he could then verify or reject. Cato wasn't the type of person who would close a case without having all the evidence to support, even if he made pretty quick conclusions.

Aleron had finished the background checks and emailed them to her earlier. She was grateful for his help even as she knew he must be very busy with the case he'd been assigned to. She flicked through the notes now. There wasn't anything incriminating as such on the ten men on the pages. A few petty crimes, stolen things from supermarkets, but nothing major apart from a drunken brawl from one of the ten.

She frowned though and suddenly dug through her bag coming up with a sheaf of images she had printed out. She pulled them out and flipped through them to find the image she wanted and remembered well as she had taken it. Erica looked at the image of the scratched letter in the dirt and then back at the list of names. If Cato had tried to scratch one last clue in the dirt, then it probably related to this list he had been looking at and thinking over before he died.

Of course she had checked out the place where the letter had been and it hadn't look altered, even if there was a possibility it had been an F say, or an L. Apart from the dirt that the wind must have blown up, there was no sign of anyone scratching at it or adding extra strokes to make it more ambiguous.

Erica pursed her lips and flipped back to the list of names, looking for people with names beginning with or ending with L, F and E. She smiled as she realised there were only 4 people on the list who could fit. She was closing in on a suspect at last.

And then she would take it from there.

--

_Phoenix Hospital_

_19__th__ March 2005_

_1:32 PM_

Doctor Nick Rutterford had never been so baffled in his life. According to the scan they had made, John's neck was not in any way broken and he had no spinal injuries, although there'd been some other things showing up unexpected not on the scan. John was probably still in pain, or at least he was but he couldn't feel it as Nick had given him a large dose of morphine before.

He had the feeling it didn't help very much though, as did their efforts. They'd tried to make John comfortable over the not-quite-yet two days he'd been there but he wasn't particularly responsive and they couldn't find out what was wrong with him.

Nick studied the images from the scan again as he stood inside the room John was currently living – lying – in. His eyes weren't mistaken and neither was the tech's – there was definitely no injuries of the spinal or neck sort, but what was giving John that intense pain then? And he was positive that John had a broken neck when he had been brought in, but injuries of that severe nature didn't heal that quickly.

Did they?

Something certainly seemed fishy about this, as well as the fact that something strange seemed to be happening to John. John hadn't even batted an eyelash since the first day and the amount of morphine given to him there hadn't allowed sedative properties, although the current amount of morphine possibly could have. Even so, he should have at least tried to move an inch by now.

Also, John's heart rate had sped up, to everyone's concern, but it thumped along steadily at that high rate. They didn't know what was wrong with it, once again, but his heart seemed to be happy with the speed, strangely enough. This whole thing was stumping everyone who didn't know what was happening with this patient who, on the outside at least, seemed perfectly fine.

It was a little strange though that John's features seemed a little different each time Nick looked at him. It was a little curious but since there was no real change, it wasn't something they were concerned about. Funny that he looked healthier rather than less as patients usually did. They'd come in sick, but looking rather normal, and leave with stringy hair and tired features.

Another thing Nick had began noticing was John's skin. It'd been harder the past few days to keep the IV needle far enough into John's skin to be able to administer to him his painkiller, although at this point, Nick didn't even know if John really needed it, just that when he wasn't given it, he was in pain.

Nick wasn't sure whether to believe it, but it seemed like John's skin and flesh was getting harder and cooler, like something out of a comic book. He was alive, but behaving in a way surely that of something … not human. Sure, a body getting stiff, he could understand as well as the cooling of the body, but that was _Algor mortis_ and _Rigor mortis_, conditions the body had _after death_.

Did that mean he was hallucinating or in a dream? It wasn't possible, right?

Who knew? Nick rubbed his forehead tiredly and not without irritation. He just wished switching to this new hospital was easier, but no, such a case like this already and he felt utterly helpless. It didn't really bode well for the rest of his time here either, did it? Maybe he should make another switch, just in case?

Nick shook his head with a sigh, gathered together all his things, checked patient John one last time and left the hospital room.

--

* * *

Okay, so if anyone practices or studies medicine here, you probably think I'm very funny, but in my defense, I have to say, I neither study nor practice either and well, I'm not even out of school yet, so I can't help that.

So all the medical and criminal knowledge is to the best of my ability and that's all I can give you. Reading a lot has its merits, but it doesn't mean everything is correct. It does, however, give you a thrill when you read something else and you know what they're doing is absolutely correct. Haha.

And the next day is the day Bella wakes up… depending on where/when you're counting from. But we're not looking at that anyway. I'm only telling you so you know where we are. Erica is still about 4 days in the future…

* * *


	5. Animal Instincts

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* * *

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**The Arsonist / Dance Studio Flames**

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* * *

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**5.** Animal Instincts**

* * *

**

**Note:** Annnd… It gets messier.

* * *

--

_20__th__ March 2005_

_10:22 PM_

"Mr Doe, time for your …"

Nick began as he entered the room to deliver the painkiller to his patient as he had innumerable times. Of course, he didn't expect the John Doe to answer since he had remained essentially catatonic for the past three days, but it was becoming habit now to talk to the motionless man on the bed.

"Bad sign." Nick muttered to himself as he crossed over to the bed. "Must be the consequence of not enough sleep. Aren't doctors such hypocrites?" He asked John who ignored him as always. "We tell everyone else to do this and that and then we go about killing ourselves."

He paused then as he studied John's arm. He had noticed yesterday just before he went off his shift that John seemed to be progressing further into the death-like symptoms he seemed to be showing. Then he frowned, realizing for the first time in ages, he could not hear the steady beeping of the electrocardiograph.

A chill went through him.

He spun the unit around and stared at it. What? Shouldn't an alarm have rung? Or did he forget to set it? He wasn't totally comfortable with the hospital yet, darn it, and he wasn't totally with it all at the moment. Surely that must be the reason – that he connected something wrong.

But then he noticed as he went to pick up John's arm again so he could slide in the needle of the syringe holding the painkiller. The skin was extremely cold and smooth. Nick noticed that the tabs holding the small electrodes to John's body had come out and felt relief that it was perhaps that which was what was wrong…

But it didn't explain the coldness of John's body.

Before Nick could move another inch, the body which had lain so still there for the past three days exploded from the bed and was behind him in an instant. Nick froze there, stiff and still as John himself had been, with surprise.

In fact, it might have done no better to run though, as within the second he was crumpling to the ground, the light blue plastic flooring of the hospital floor coming up – or him going down, really – to meet it.

Darkness blurred on the edges of Nick's vision, and he slipped into unconsciousness.

--

The man looked around the room, the surgical smell of the hospital seeping into him and invading his senses. It was almost too strong. Pulling the clipboard off the back of the bed, he found he understood very little of it. Well, he guessed he wasn't one for medicine then.

He studied the name after 'Patient' on the clipboard. It read 'John Doe' in a neat male hand.

Although he couldn't remember anything right now, he could swear John Doe wasn't a real name. No, he didn't think it was. Of course, at this moment, he couldn't think of a better name that what was written there, but instinctively, he knew the name didn't fit. He studied the name after the 'Doctor' and glanced at the man at his feet. He'd guess that was one Nicholas Rutterford.

Then he noticed the burn in the back of his throat and this thirst increased as he smelt a distinct smell which suddenly put a word into his head.

Human.

John, as he was referred to now anyway, reeled back and an overwhelming sense of wrongness went over him even as he thought that word. A single thought flowed through his head.

_It's wrong. Killing someone is wrong. It is wrong._

_He's not dead._ John thought irritably, but he knew the doctor wasn't really what he was thinking about, but he knew what he would do if he didn't leave soon was probably kill the doctor for real this time.

For what? _Why?_

Without even thinking it, John changed from his hospital gown back into the tattered clothing he found in the closet next to his bed and stole the doctor's coat after thoughtfully removing the name tag. It would be better if he didn't walk out looking like he'd been in a fight. John's feet then carried him over to the window where he slid it open.

There was a fly screen in the way to prevent patients from doing exactly what he was going to do, but he moved it aside impatiently quite easily. The screws that held it in place could have not been there at all as they pinged out and bounced across the floor. Then he slid onto the ledge and jumped over the side, landing two stories down without a problem or a single injury. He almost felt disappointed it had only been such a short distance.

John got to his feet and continued on his way, even though he had no idea where he was going. He didn't know where he was – although he supposed the hospital signs were a kind of a dead give-away – or who he was, but he intended to find out.

That was… after he got away from all those…

Humans.

--

_24__th __March 2005_

_2:46 PM_

Erica looked up from the video footage she had been pursuing and realised she had missed her lunch hour. Still, she had decided that Aleron had been right after all about the person at the airport and had set up the facial recognition software to try and match the perp's face from the video to the suspects' ones. The only obvious flaw in the plan thus far was the absence of images of two of the suspects, but she would have to make a few strategic calls for those. She picked up the receiver of her phone and dialed Aleron's number.

"Detective Craig speaking."

"I was looking through the videos you sent me." Erica began.

"Right."

"And I guess you were right about the I2K."

"What?"

"Intention to kill, sorry. My own abbreviation."

"Glad you realise that. Did you get anything else out of it?" Aleron's voice was faintly sarcastic.

"No, but maybe I agree with … Cato's theory finally." Erica replied. "I guess it gives me an angle to work on and now I have suspects."

"You always had suspects since you 'took over' this case, but I'm assuming you managed to cut them down."

"That's right. To four people."

"Any luck with those?"

"I'm missing a few images." Erica replied. "I've set up the facial recognition software with what I have, but I'll still need those images to try and match them."

"You're stepping into deep water here, you know, Erica. This really isn't your area of expertise."

"What?" Erica hackles rose at his words. She struggled to keep her voice calm, "You don't want to work out what happened?"

"I do." Aleron insisted, "But you know you won't be doing a good job of this if you aren't trained in it."

"Are you only saying this out of vanity or something? You don't want me to mess up your case?"

"No, I just don't want to make mistakes that we will _both_ regret." Aleron replied. "Anyway, you're breaking so many rules it isn't funny. You're not authorized to do any of this or even access many of the files that I'm handing over to you."

Erica could see his point even if she wasn't happy with it. "We have no other choice, do we? I am determined to see this through even if I break all sorts of rules throughout the case."

"Even if you lose your job, get sent to prison?" Aleron asked. "Is that what you really want?"

"I'm not totally helpless." Erica replied. "I may not have the exact training you have, but I know enough procedure. Procedure is much the same for most of us. You photograph the scene, preserve the scene, and look for evidence – nothing we wouldn't do. Arson Investigators don't just look at fires and do nothing, we also get dirty. I may not be totally qualified for this case, but I know what I am doing."

"I hope so." On the other side of the line, Aleron let out a long breath. "I wish I could be investigating with you, but you know I got expressively forbidden, even if the Chief didn't say the exact words out loud."

"I know." As an Arson Investigator, she technically wasn't under his command, so she was safe. They were part of the police force but worked more directly with the Fire Service than the Police generally, although it was true the two were interconnected. She hoped Chief of Police Ward hadn't talked to her own boss, though.

"I'm happy to provide any assistance, I suppose." Aleron concluded. "It's not like there's anything else I _can_ do except work on it in whatever free time I have, which isn't much at the moment. And when I do work off-duty on the Dance Studio Fire it's only research. Give me the names of the suspects you need images for."

"There are two suspects I need images for. Edward Cullen and Fredrick Scott."

"And the other suspects you had, who were they?"

"Why?"

"I see no benefit in keeping information to one person, do you? If we share it, at least one of us can continue the case if something happens."

A shiver went through Erica. "Alright, the other two are Ethan Williams and Lawrence Grey."

"Thanks. I'll get back to you soon." Aleron hung up. No sooner had Erica out down her own phone when it rang again.

"Hello? Arson Investigator Alan speaking."

"Alan, there's been a fire down at a business on Perront Drive that looks suspicious. The insurance company wants it looked over to see if it was deliberately lit. They're not convinced it was accidental. The business denies it, of course, but it's someone else also could have lit it since there has been some crime in the area."

"Can't you send Rosanna Smith?" Erica asked, preoccupied.

"She's already on a case," The dispatcher's voice was annoyed as she replied. "So get out there, won't you? 25/26 Perront Drive. Quick smart." She hung up abruptly like Aleron had.

"I'm on it." Erica replied to the thin air, slamming the phone into its cradle with perhaps unnecessary force and wincing. She guessed it probably hadn't been a good idea to annoy the dispatcher.

Sighing, she picked up her jacket from where she had flung it over the back of her chair and slipped it on, and then hurried out to her car to get to the fire scene quickly. Once there, she assessed the flames and went through the area carefully after the fire fighters had put out all the flames and stood back.

Steam rose off the building as always and Erica went scouting for signs of which way the fire would have gone that could perhaps give her a clue as to the origin of the fire, and hence let her judge if it had been set or not.

Why anyone would set fire to this building, she had no idea, but if it were anything, most likely it was an insurance fraud as the insurance company had surmised. Or did someone have a grudge on this place, though she found that extremely petty – not that she was really in a position to comment on others.

Judging by crime statistics though, most likely it wasn't because of a grudge. If there had been crime increase in the area lately, it could just be hoodlums being stupid again. Or what if the same person who had targeted the Dance Studio had returned to set more fires? If Cato had been wrong and all they had on their hands was a crazy arsonist?

Oh yeah, she would like that wouldn't she? No, it wasn't possible. Besides, why here? Or there? Link? Connection?

At least she judged that there was no accelerant so far. So if it was an accidental fire, what could have caused a fire in the building anyway? Were there any fireplaces? Would they really use it in March? If it had been an accident, how come she had been asked to check if it was a case of arson?

Erica had no idea and way too many questions to contemplate, but she pulled her kit out of her car, pulled on latex gloves and went to work scouting for clues.

--

_24__th __March 2005_

_4:15 PM_

Ah. Blood.

At first, when he'd first escaped from the hospital, he'd had no idea what he thirsted for, only that the _scent_, for some reason, of humans was particularly mouth watering.

If you could call it that.

So he'd gone through the usual channels – or what he thought was usual anyway – like water, the such. Not that it'd done him a scrap of good. It'd done very little towards quenching his thirst and the water sloshed around in him. He thought it weird that noone else could hear it, but then again, it seemed he could hear many things the humans couldn't, such as the birds a whole mile away – if he concentrated.

However, John had found that the thirst, after a while, could be ignored, if not for a prolonged amount of time. At first it had plagued him and he'd swallowed uncomfortably, even after that water, trying to ease it if he could. After a while of enduring, however, he'd found it a little easier, like pain starts to fade into the background after being in pain for so long.

Not that it'd stopped him a minute ago.

For all his desire not to kill – which he had no idea where it had sprung from – he'd given in just a few minutes ago and attacked a stray cat in an alleyway. He'd finally realised what he'd been craving for when he came to his senses right after the cat had died, but had drunk the blood anyway. Waste not, want not. It had tasted just a little grimy, but beggars can't be choosers either. Well, at least it wouldn't be missed, he supposed, but the taking of any life seemed to pain his body.

He wondered who he was – or had been.

No good asking himself that question, John thought, smiling wryly. He wasn't going to remember. He couldn't remember anything at the moment, except for that little fiasco just then and the doctor in that hospital. For some reason things like this desire _not_ to kill and knowledge of how to do things came to him easily, but he still had no idea why he had these desires.

John stood out on the street in the white doctor's coat more than he thought he would in his shabby clothes. Perhaps it'd been the wrong idea. But then again, he had no business in the street anyway, with his wanting to attack anyone who walked past, keeping his control by a thread and that same sentence thrumming through his head.

So where to start looking for an identity? Walking around named John Doe would be suspicious as, so maybe a different name was in order. He could keep John, for sure, as something told him it was a common name, but he'd have to think up a last name. Maybe he could just take Rutterford like that doctor in the hospital.

Well… maybe not. That same something told him that if police looked into a missing patient and happened to find someone on the street with the same surname, they were bound to think they were lying. No, it was probably better to think of a new surname.

John looked at the cat at his feet. Feline… Felix? Hmm, he didn't think he was going to get any further that that. His mind wasn't in full functioning order to let him think up anything else without a link to something. Garbage? Nothing. Newspaper?

_Newspaper._

John went over and picked up the newspaper, flicking through it for a name. Something common but not too obvious, he suppose. Not something like Smith or Jones, most likely. Donovan? Johnathan Donovan. John almost laughed aloud at how amusing it sounded. Well, to him anyway.

Finally he settled on a last name from the newspaper. Something he'd picked from an article about a cop that died or went missing or something. He supposed Alan would do. Not that common, but something he could get away with, perhaps.

The article had struck a note with him though, for some reason, so John reached out, ripped the page of the article out and slipped the page into the pocket of his slacks. He had no idea why he felt compelled to keep the article, but thought no more of it as he continued his walk down the alleyway to the hidden streets.

He didn't know how he knew this, but these were the back streets. Places a person could get lost in, places a person could die in if they wandered in at the wrong time and place. Places a person just plain didn't want to be in.

Well, good thing he wasn't really a person.

John wandered down them, looking for meaning, any meaning. Anything he remembered? No, probably not. The streets stunk with filth; rubbish that noone had cleaned up in years. What was the point? John bet that there was probably blood under all that rubbish. Maybe evidence – albeit contaminated – of all sorts of crimes committed where noone would ever be the wiser, or those who saw would never tell.

John let out another exasperated breath. He knew things, had thoughts that never seemed to make complete sense. Who was he and how did he know these small details? His body seemed to be perfectly capable of leading him around and telling him all sorts of useful knowledge, except it wouldn't tell him the one thing he really wanted to know – _who was he?_

There was the sharp rap of high heels, and the sound echoed along the streets. Or at least, it appeared to for John whose hearing was certainly quite enhanced. John launched himself and in a minute was hiding in the shadows in the alleyway where he thought the heels were coming from.

Something – or someone – asked why he was pursuing this, but John had no answer to give. Maybe it was that thirst rising up in the back of his throat again. Or that sudden instinct whenever he smelled humans to attack.

The woman paced back and fro in front of the alleyway as if she had been walking to actually go somewhere and suddenly had started pacing for reasons unknown. The wind whistled through and brought the human smell to his nostrils.

In that single instant he ceased to be any pretence of human. His eyes narrowed and his lips curved and his thoughts grew focused. He'd tasted blood, but it hadn't been enough. It had been like making do with muddy water when there was a spring full of clear sweet water nearby. From scents, human blood would taste to delectable in comparison.

The woman paused in her pacing, but she had ceased to be personalized in any way to him. She was just prey and he was the hunter. He breathed out roughly as he itched to strike. She glanced into the alleyway and her eyes flicked from one side to another warily. Scared? She was just like the deer, frightened. He was a hunter.

She took a few hesitant steps into the alleyway, her eyes still wary.

"Hello?" She asked, but he didn't understand the words.

She took a few more.

He pounced, pushing her roughly against the wall, ruby red eyes blazing as he looked at her with those narrowed eyes, ready to pounce, to drink and drain her dry before she could even scream, even react, even _begin_ to struggle.

But something inside him was holding him back.

Even as he stood there, breathing deeply, the inner vicious animal wanting to attack, to tear at her, drink her blood, revel in the blood… some part of him said …

_No_.

He frowned as he continued to pin her against the wall, fighting with himself and his breathing slowed even as he glared at the woman with contempt as his sense of himself returned. He was disgusted with his actions, but another part of him was merely contemptuous at the fragility, the weakness of the humans.

No better than food.

No, that wasn't right. Life was precious. All life was precious. Humans might die easily, but they were strong in their own way.

The woman John was pinning to the wall struggled, trying to jerk out of his grip as well as struggling for breath against his hand on her throat, pulling him from his thoughts. He noticed his pale hand on her skin and it looked just wrong. He released her and took a step back.

The woman collapsed to the grimy floor and shoved the hair out of her face as she looked up at him with a degree of fright, but also with a readiness to fight back if necessarily. If only she knew what a futile gesture it would have been.

But her eyes widened as she seemed to notice something.

"Cato?" She whispered.

--

* * *

Probably saw that coming, didn't you? Especially you, aliceTHEmerpire? Hehe.

I'd like dedicate, I suppose, this to the people who died in the bushfires in Victoria. The death toll is around 181 at the moment and expected to rise still as well as the destruction of thousands of homes and communities. The fires are suspected to be caused by arson and the fire is still raging with more fires springing up, most likely as a result of more arson, and conditions are going to get much worse also. Arson should be left in the one place it only ever should be – in fiction.

I'm not sure it's a suitable dedication, since it is about arson after all, but I hope its people like Cato and Erica and those other fire investigators out there that can figure out what's going on, who's doing this and stop the ending of lives and destruction of property.

* * *


End file.
